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Travel Helps to Fuel the Record-Setting $100 Billion in SPAC Deals Announced This Year

Cameron Sperance
NYSE Wall Street

Photo Credit: Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, raised more money in the first part of 2021 than they have from any prior year. Flickr / Ken Lund

Skift Take

Travel companies increasingly looked to go public via SPACs this year, but the exuberance might be short-lived as a slowdown is likely in the U.S. Regulators are already looking into the explosion of activity.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, raised an eye-popping $100 billion so far in 2021, according to Refinitiv data released this week. That’s 23 percent higher than what was raised in all of last year, the prior record holder. While the data provider couldn’t parse out industry-specific SPAC numbers, travel has been a major source of growth in this sector viewed as a relatively quick way to debut on the stock market. That has some raising concerns over how much runway is left for travel companies and future SPACs, despite more companies getting into the space seemingly by the week. “A lot of the SPACs in the pipeline right now will probably pull back,” Carl Shepherd, co-founder of HomeAway, said this week at Skift’s Short Term

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